The City of Dreams -- Part 19

[This may be a reflection of how I feel when I have to go shopping. But probably not.]


I woke in time for dinner. It happened, then it was over. After I'd escaped back to my room, I couldn't remember what we'd had to eat, what we'd said, what we'd done at the table. I knew everyone had been there--Mom, Dad, my sisters--but the meal was a memory more like a dream than any of my time in the city made entirely from dreams.
I didn't know what to think about that.
I made a half-hearted attempt to plow through more of my book for English, but after a few more chapters of despair mixed with tragedy, I threw the book at my desk--school property, I know, bad me--and wandered into the bathroom to find my toothbrush.
Cindy was there ahead of me, brushing.
"So what's up with Brie?" she asked around bristles and toothpaste foam.
"She's nice," I said, running the water over my toothbrush.
"That it?"
"Why?" I asked. "Does it matter?"
"Of course it does. I have to tell my friend something."
"Ah, right. Your friend on the cross country team who thinks I'm 'cute.'"
Cindy rolled her eyes and spit. "You say that like it's a bad thing."
"Is she your age?"
"Yeah."
"It'd be like dating my kid sister."
"Lame," said Cindy. "Pick any girl from fifteen to twenty and it's like dating one of your sisters. Doesn't count as an excuse."
"Maybe I don't feel like dating."
"Anybody?"
"Sure."
"Even Brie?"
"How should I know?"
Cindy rinsed, spat, and looked at me in the mirror.
"You are messed up," she said, and pushed past me.
I brushed my teeth.

I fell asleep and found myself standing on a sidewalk. In front of me was the most bizarre parking lot I'd ever seen in my life. It stretched out as far as I could see to either side and, ahead, for what must have been half a mile.
That wasn't the strange part.
The entire space was filled with cars. No room to drive, to pull in or out, none of those narrow alleys with arrows pointing which way you should be driving. It was all cars all night, bumper to bumper, door to door, just enough room between them for the white lines painted on the blacktop. The air was filled with the strange, mechanical wheezing of sleeping automobiles.
"Crazy, huh?" said Brie.
I smiled at her. "What is there in the City that isn't crazy?"
"Me," she said. "I'm not crazy."
"That's good to know," I said. "But why do you hang out with me, then?"
She tilted her head to the side. "I guess I am a little bit crazy."
"Were you waiting for me?" I asked.
"I figured you'd turn up. I wanted you here."
"And things just work that way in the City of Dreams?"
"It did tonight." Brie settled her shoulder bag around behind her back and rearranged the hood of her hoodie under her hair. "You ready to go?" she asked.
"Go where?"
"The Mall."
"Where's the Mall?"
She put her hand out, straight ahead, her finger pointing across the parking lot. There, past the rows of sleeping steel, I could see a sprawling building, lit around the doors with neon and capitalism.
"You're kidding," I said.
"It's the only way to get to the Mall."
"But there's no room to walk."
"So we climb over the cars," she said, matter-of-factly.
"Are they friendly cars?”
"Not at all, from what I hear."
"What if they wake up?"
Brie looked me in the eye and smiled. Her eyebrows bobbed, up and down, and I felt a jolt down to my toes.
"What were you saying about crazy?" I asked.
"I'm just a little bit," she said, turning back to. "But you're REALLY crazy, because you're about to go with me. Try not to make noise."
"Wait!" I said, and a car near us rumbled in its sleep. I held my breath, and it settled back to a regular, mechanical rhythm. Brie looked at me and shook her head, mock disapproval on her face. I stuck my tongue out at her, and she smiled again. "Do people do this all the time?" I asked.
"Sure."
"What's at the Mall?"
"I have no idea."
"Why not?"
"People always GO to the Mall," said Brie, "but I've never heard of anyone actually MAKING it there."
Then she turned and, delicately, slid onto the hood of a station wagon.
I looked after her, helplessly, settled my own bag onto my back, and climbed onto a sedan.

Forty-five minutes later--give or take three years of my life and a bucket of sweat--and we had almost done the impossible. The Mall was tall in front of us, two stories and a multiplex theater that promised all the delights that money could buy--or at least a break from the nerve-wracking tension of climbing over rumbling, angry cars having angry dreams. Don't ask me how I knew they were angry dreams, or how cars made from dreams had dreams of their own, but I could tell. These weren't the nice kind of cars that you see in TV commercials, taking good care of newlyweds or a pee-wee baseball team. These were cars that resented every mile they'd ever had to drive, every bottom that ever sat on any one of their seats. Their doors were scarred, their bumpers pitted and marked.
These cars were a seething, sleeping mass of suppressed rage.
We'd slipped our way over them, hood to hood, windshield, cab top, bumper, stepping as gently as we could. One flimsy minivan hood had buckled under my foot, popping down with--to my tight nerves--the bang of a hammer popping the front of a TV (which is pretty loud, don't ask me how I know). Brie froze. I froze. The cars settled back into their troubled slumber.
Brie grinned at me, like an idiot I grinned back, and we continued our odyssey.
It didn't help at all that I knew, if anything went wrong, I'd just wake up. At least, I assumed I would. All the reason in my head couldn't beat back the rumble in the cars beneath me, or push away the memory of the streetlight head swooping down at me like a bird of prey. My shirt was wet under my armpits, and though I could hardly believe it, I was having fun.
And we had made it. Almost. Between us and the doors to the Mall were a mere five rows of cars. As tired as my arms and legs were, I still felt all the burn of adrenaline. We were going to do it. The last few rows, Brie had been looking back to smile at me every car we passed. Something about that smile made the trip worth it, even if we never made it to the Mall.
I immediately regretted even thinking that, as somewhere in the parking lot, a car alarm went off. Brie looked back at me, her eyes wide. Mine felt the same. The car alarm spread like a yawn, triggering alarm after alarm after alarm. We could see the cars in that direction shifting, thumping, crashing into each other.
"Run!" I shouted, and Brie scrambled ahead of me, leaping from hood to hood, almost without pausing to look where to put her feet. I picked a different path, hoping to avoid any cars she woke as she ran, but it didn't do any good. Car alarms sprang to angry, high-pitched life all around us. The car under my foot shifted and bucked, and I lost my footing, sliding across the hood to crash into the truck parked in the next slot over. I scrambled for a hand hold, but my legs slipped down into the gap between the cars, next to the truck's driver-side door. I knew that any moment I'd either be smashed into jelly between insane automobiles, or I'd wake up. I knew which I was voting for.
"Perry!" shouted Brie, off to my right. She was in the bed of the truck, reaching out to me. I grabbed her hand and scrambled half way onto the truck, just in time. Behind me the truck and its neighbor opened their doors at the same time, smashing together where I'd been seconds before. The back door on the car caught me a glancing blow before I managed to lever myself all the way into the bed of the truck, and I expected a bruise later (if you could really bruise in the City), but I was okay. And still asleep.
And three rows away from the Mall. Three rows of bucking, crashing, outraged automobiles.
"How do we do this?" I shouted to Brie as we crouched.
"I have no idea," she shouted back. The truck heaved under us, trying to throw us out, and the tailgate slammed down and up, snapping at us.
"Do we wait for them to calm down?" I asked.
She looked around at the sea of crashing metal and grabbed at the edge of the truck bed for balance. "I don't know if we'll make it that long," she shouted.
"You're more than a little crazy," I yelled.
"I like you, too," she yelled back. "Shall we go?"
She was laughing, and I was laughing, and it was something about being in the City that did it to me. No, not just being in the City. Being in the City with Brie. It was better than anything I could remember.
"Let's do it," I said.
Before I could think about it, I lurched to my feet as the truck bounced down, ran two steps at an angle, and leapt. Launched by the heave of the truck, I sailed through the air. The roof of a twelve-passenger van hurried up to meet me--or I hurried down to meet it--but I only hit the far edge, spinning off to land in the soft leather back seat of a convertible.
Disoriented by the flight, I struggled to my hands and knees. I looked up just in time to see Brie following my path. Somehow I threw myself onto the floor of the car, and Brie thumped onto the seat above me. Beneath us the convertible was clearly outraged, slamming its doors open and closed, motor growling.
"Go! Go-go!" I shouted, pushing Brie up and out. We scrambled over the short trunk and slid to the pavement, scampering away on hands and knees--and we were clear. No more cars. Just sidewalk, a small fountain, and a potted tree. Behind us was the roar and rumble and siren-chorus of the angriest parking lot ever dreamed.
Brie laughed. I laughed. Tears were leaking out of the corners of my eyes as I lay on the ground next to Brie. Somehow my hand found hers, squeezed, and stayed there. She squeezed back.
Eventually we stopped laughing, and the adrenaline started to wear off, and the cars had made no sign of ever quieting down.  Ever.
"Go inside?" shouted Brie, questioning.
I nodded, the cement rough against my head through my hair. We helped each other up, making a mess of it, since neither of us quite had our balance back. Soon we were laughing again, and still holding hands, and close to each other, and I liked it. Staggering from sheer joy, we fumbled our way into the Mall.